Silver Lining
by infiniteviking
Summary: Ichigo thinks too much, but only to make up for the times when he doesn't think enough. Gen, introspection, aftermath of and spoilers up to Chapter 423.


(I doubt that Kubo intends Ichigo's mind to wander in this direction, but that one panel in Chapter 421 will still be there even if he doesn't.)

**Silver Lining**

"Karin's worried about you, Ichigo."

Once, he would have shoved his closet door closed and said something gruff without turning around. _Someone should check if she has a fever_, or _then she should stop running in and pretending to talk to the invisible people in my room._ Today he sighed and shook his head, and turned around to smile at his sister.

"She doesn't need to be."

Yuzu didn't look reassured. She twisted a bit of fabric in her fingers, part of some project or other - one of those cute frilly things she was always working on. Something to make the world a little happier.

"I know she's being annoying, but I'm worried too. You were..." Her voice dropped. "Asleep for so long."

Ichigo straightened, trying to find words to reassure her. A month, they'd said, and it had only been a week since he'd woken up; and since then, Karakura Town had been quiet. Strangely, overpoweringly quiet, without the constant flow of spiritual energies at the edge of his consciousness.

And Ichigo was content.

Without even the small powers of sight that had drawn him into Rukia's world, he could be little else. He didn't even have bad dreams

(because if the Hollows came, he'd never know, he could do nothing to stop them)

..because his father was there, and his friends were there, and Rukia was out there too, whether he could see her or not; and Soul Society wouldn't abandon them. Even if they could no longer rely on Ichigo's strength.

Yuzu giggled.

"When you make that kind of face, you look like yourself again."

"Huh?"

"Before, you kept looking like Kon. - Yes, that looks more like you. I'll tell her to stop seeing ghosts." She turned on her heel, pausing at the door to look back at her brother, who scowled harder for effect but couldn't stop the scowl from turning into a grin.

"Look, Ichigo, the rain's stopped."

"I know. I'm going for a walk."

.

It hadn't rained for several days after he'd woken up. When thunder had finally started grumbling one night, Ichigo had turned over in his bed and watched the jeweled light spattering his windows, searching his heart for the hollowness that had always blinked awake when the rain came down. But he couldn't be sure what he felt, and he'd fallen asleep before finding any answers.

The streets, glowing through sunlit haze, were at once fresh and familiar. He'd missed the clean-up; Karakura had rebuilt itself as seamlessly as the city inside his mind, wrapping itself in glass and pine as though white death had never passed through it. He'd tried to meditate, and found nothing inside of himself but silence and walls and an unlit, peaceful space, too peaceful for fear but too empty for anything else.

He walked through a puddle, shook his head as a tree dripped water down his neck, and wondered how everything wasn't more different.

There was a flash of blue. He looked up.

The reflected sunlight that had caught his eye diminished as he faced it, already slipping away as the sun moved. Beyond it, framed by a couple of taller buildings further down the road, was a space of blue sky, and for a moment Ichigo had to steady himself against a bolt of vertigo. It almost felt as though he could have stepped off the street, straight up into that heartbreaking pool of color.

He remembered something then which he hadn't had time to notice while it had all been going on.

"I had to ask you," he murmured, hardly hearing himself. "All that time, that was all I had to do."

He hadn't wanted to. He'd never even imagined the answer he'd been given. That power couldn't have awakened for his own sake as well. It was only there to make him more responsible, right? To stop him from making excuses; to spur him into action no matter the cost? Living up to Rukia's example, protecting his loved ones, standing between the innocent and anything that endangered them, with a strength that had only grown out of control because he was too weak to face it - because he had feared to face it - why?

The rain had stopped, but the fear that had flooded his soul had not broken when he accepted Tensa Zangetsu's blade.

It had broken when he let Tensa Zangetsu accept him.

The street steamed as the pools of water melted away and the midday hush made the city feel dizzyingly empty.

_I would have lent you my strength from the beginning. But what I wanted to protect, Ichigo, was you._

A ridiculous, selfish thought. But Tensa Zangetsu hadn't been the spirit of his selfishness. A blade rooted in the coward part of his soul could have hidden away and refused to be wielded. A zanpakutou who held him in contempt could have trodden him underfoot and seized the reins as its Hollow half had threatened to do.

Why hadn't it hated him that much?

When had his own heart learned to trust itself?

Mad words; impossible words. But they had swept away the flood.

The old man's voice, the young stranger's voice, the distant voice of his father, blended memory and wonder and Ichigo found his throat tight with something he couldn't define.

Then Keigo found him and the moment was ruined, but he knew he would not forget it again.

.

Night had fallen by the time he got home, dodged his father's enthusiastic welcome, quarreled cheerfully with Karin, thanked Yuzu for making dinner, and at last escaped upstairs.

There was a note taped to his closet. It was written in a sort of absurd code, largely composed of badly sketched Soul Reapers with rabbit ears. He poked around in the closet with a mop handle, remembered that _shinigami_ could let physical objects pass through them if they wanted to, and flopped back on his bed with an irritated groan. It was hard being blind when everyone else in Karakura could see.

With his window closed, he nearly missed the whistling noise, but it intruded on his consciousness just in time to bring him back to himself as something hit the outside of the glass with a shattering splash.

Yelping in surprise, he sat up, scrambling away in case the window gave way. It didn't, but the streetlights outside did a nice job of illuminating a line of backwards letters dripping down in the gory red ink that was Kisuke Urahara's idea of a joke.

_Urahara Shoten, midnight, bring Kon... if you can read this without a mirror!_~

Crazy sandal-hat guy. At least this time the paint was on the outside.

Ichigo pulled the curtain closed, glanced at the clock, and lay back down, smiling in a manner that nobody who knew him would ever mistake for Kon's.

It was still far too quiet.

But there was no way the quiet was going to last for long.


End file.
